 The world's two biggest child nutrition programs, the ICDS or Integrated Child Development Scheme and the Midday Meal Program run by the Indian government, suffered a severe jolt in March and April this year as food grain allocated for them was not made available during the sudden, ill-conceived lockdown that began on March 24, midnight. The off-take of food grain for the Midday Meals Program, which currently feeds an estimated 12 crore children plummeted from 335,000 tons in the month of March and April 2019 to just 109,000 tons in March and April 2020. For the nutrition program run by Anganwadi Centers under the ICDS which feeds roughly 14 crore children and women, food grain off-take dipped from 238,000 tons last year to just 97,000 tons this year, again in the month of March and April. Basically the ICDS scheme of the Anganwadi Program as it is known primarily targets the groups and all of these are very important to break the cycle of the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition. So these are children under 6 years of age, adolescent girls and pregnant and lactating mothers. The school Midday Meals on the other hand addresses classroom hunger for children in the age group of 5 to 14 who are a class 1 to 8. So in terms of impact on malnutrition, ICDS we seem to be even more important because that is a program which is directly addressing the determinants of malnutrition in the age at which malnutrition sets in and this seems to be the most crucial. One of the things that do make the headlines and we keep hearing every year is the Global Manga Report and the Global Manga Index and we know that by this index India ranks quite worthy even below our neighbors who are much poorer in economic terms such as malnutrition, Nepal. The statistics that feed into this index as well as in this government programming is from the National Family Health Survey of 2015 which shows that 38% of children under 5 years of age in India are stunted which means that almost 40% of children have low height for age which is seen to be an indicator of chronic undernutrition even in terms of wasting which is an indicator of acute undernutrition. About 20% children in India are wasted which is quite high by any international standards even if we compare with the poorer countries the same Sub-Saharan Africa. There have been many studies and data which show that children who attend government schools their determinants are given or children who attend ICDS, Andhamadi centres tend to be also children from the marginalized communities. This is because of multiple reasons including that the quality of services is not so great that there is an increase in demand for English medium education amongst those who are able to pay and so on. Therefore with these centres and schools being closed over the last few months into the lab, the impact has also been much more on children who belong to marginalized communities, children who belong to families who depend on informal sector work for their daily earnings including the migrant workers that we saw and these teams are sometimes very crucial in their lives. For example in school midday meals we have many anecdotes and primary field studies have seen that oftentimes for the poorest of families the school midday meal happens to be the first meal that a child needs or that things like dal and eggs and states where they are given these are things which are part of children's diet because they get it in the younger parties and midday meals which they don't usually get in their homes on a daily regular basis. Although there was a Supreme Court order right in fact a couple of days before the national lockdown itself saying that the midday meal and ICDs in some form must continue across the country even when there is a lockdown we know that this is not happening in many parts of the country in places where it is happening also it is either being given in the form of a cash compensation or in the form of dry rations. Between these two dry rations are still better because at least some food goes into the house whereas in terms of cash compensation what we are seeing is that when you just simply convert the amount of money that these teams spend on children for a head and put it into their bank account it translates into a very small amount. So for example in Delhi each child has been getting depending on the class that the child is in anywhere between 75 to 90 rupees for a full month and from what we know this has also happened only once in the last few months. So while 75 to 90 rupees when used at a wholesale sale level with FCI providing the grains for free allows the school to provide a decent meal giving it as a cash to an individual family we know means nothing and definitely cannot meet one nutritious meal for a child for every day in the month which is what the school every working day which is what the school and the Anavadi were doing and therefore one doesn't know because there is no growth monitoring data and so on but there is definitely a fear and I think it is a valid fear that in these three months of the lockdown we might have lost out on some of the gains that we were making as far as addressing malice among children in the country is concerned. In April this year 570 lakh tons of food grains were held in stock by the central government this increased to 644 lakh tons in May and 834 lakh tons in June according to the Department of Food and Public Distribution. The reason that the government is not prepared is because nobody cares that children are and pregnant and lack of women are one of the most invisible lives groups in our country they have very little voice and when this whole national lockdown the way happened and the kind of crisis that created in the country these are the groups that any government thought of last and because of which it's not happening otherwise in terms of food shortages if the government wanted to do this then it was not very difficult because there is no shortage of food as such food grains are available and again children don't eat very much it's very little it could have been easily organized where even if not distribution of cooked meals like it's being done in Kerala at least a decent package of dry rations for the wheat made which included rice, pulse or wheat, pulses, eggs, oil maybe even some vegetables at least onions and potatoes and so on which food have been given to children I hear that other than Kerala with meals are being done Pramal Nadu is also doing a decent job of such distribution maybe other states are doing it as well although the Anganwadi centers have been closed the Anganwadi workers have been given many tasks which are related to addressing the Covid pandemic so they have been asked to do household surveys for council people on quarantining do surveys and take care of the returning migrants and so on and all of this they are being expected to do without any additional payment and in most cases without also making any provisions for their own protection in the form of masks and gloves and so on so these workers have not been given anything for this work that they are doing putting themselves in risk and this becomes even more concerning keeping in mind the fact that most states in the country do not even pay minimum wages to the Anganwadi workers who perform this very important task in our country of taking care of the most vulnerable of children young children and pregnant lactatic mothers so these very poorly paid workers who have a lot of work in any case are now doing these additional tasks in relation to Covid without any additional incentive or payment or any kind of protection this kind of attitude towards the children in the country reflects the neglect of the Modi government towards the foreign working class like I said earlier the people who access the children who access these centers are children of the working class these are the children who are most vulnerable to malnutrition this is the season now so in July of this when malnutrition and infection increases in most parts of India in the context of the monsoon and post monsoon as well as pre-harvest therefore people don't have enough to eat in their houses in normal circumstances also and now in the context of the lockdown and the pandemic it is even worse and therefore we in in any mature democracy the most vulnerable the young child would have been the first person that we fought off and the fact that we are still definitely not at the central government level thinking of this age group shows an insensitive attitude towards them